


Ash Storms

by RiskyBiznu



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Genre: Drabble, Gen, No Dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:33:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23258473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiskyBiznu/pseuds/RiskyBiznu
Summary: It would seem the Tribunal's quaint little Ghostfence project isn't working all that well, to say the least.
Kudos: 6





	Ash Storms

**Author's Note:**

> This started as an aimless exercise, but I had so much fun writing it that I just had to post it! Turns out aimless descriptive drabbles are super enjoyable to write-- who knew?

The ash is _everywhere._ It coats him inside and out— it builds on his lips, digs under his fingernails, pours into his ears, and stings his eyes with every squinting blink.

It's in the soil, and either it's permeated every guar flank and mushroom cap, or his mouth is never fully clean of it to begin with. It dusts the surface of every lake and stagnant pool the same way it fogs both sides of every windowpane, and it settles into the riverbeds just as thoroughly. If the ash storms get bad enough, they’ll gum up the smaller streams, and the slaughterfish will thrash uselessly in the mud and suffocate. The mudcrabs will probe their sludgy riverbeds for prey; the ash can easily bury all the minnows and soft water-plants under several inches of silt. In the depths of the kwama mines, there’s hardly any ash tracked in, but the kwama drones are having trouble detecting their own pheromone trails under all the fresh ash whenever they go out foraging, and they’ve been spending more and more time frantically grooming their feelers and sensory hairs, so the kwama queens have been too hungry to lay nearly as many eggs as they ought to. More and more of the miners are simply hoarding the eggs instead of selling them, at least whenever they can grab any to begin with.

The ash storms howl like bellowing dragons. They ebb and flow across the mainland, lashing out at the worst possible moments, and churning restlessly at the foot of Red Mountain between strikes. There’s always another bout of Blight cases after a storm has swept through, but sometimes the discoloration of the skin is hard to notice under all the ash. If it weren’t for that part of the aftermath, he’d think these are a lot like snowstorms, because the fresh-fallen ash has a peculiar way of muffling every noise around for miles. Right when a storm has finally blown over, and everyone is still hidden away indoors, it’s deathly silent, as though even the locusts are terrified and weeping, too.

He runs for shelter from today’s ash storm, ducking into a seedy little outpost in Maar Gan, but it's already too late; the ash swirls into the room and washes out all the color in the single moment he needs to open and shut that heavy front door. He looks like a ghost, or maybe some kind of floured pastry, the way he’s dusted off-white so thoroughly that only his eyes have any of their original hue left.

He shuffles about the Maar Gan outpost, helping the clerk to bunch scrap fabric along the windowsills and doorframes. It won't keep out all the ash, but it's better than nothing. His boot-prints trail around the lobby, sprinkled with the ashes that slide from the wide brim of his conical hat.

The clerk thanks him for his assistance, and he's sure there's a faint smile behind the fabric that shields the clerk's mouth and nose.

He hasn't managed to scrounge up much in the way of provisions; he could only find one healthy nix-hound on the way here. The fabric he'd wrapped its meat in has grown damp and grimy, and the chitin is no longer pliable. His guarskin canteen has been empty for the past few miles, so he orders a sujamma—straight up. He'll need it to choke down the chewy nix-hound.

At the other end of the outpost, two fellow dark-elves discuss the Blight. It's getting worse, one murmurs. Two more deaths in Ald'ruhn just this week. A human nearly brought it into Vivec, until an Ordinator caught him and speared him. The other elf worries with something in her gloved hands: a triangular ebony totem. The Tribunal will save us, she insists. Praise the Tribunal; they're doing everything they can.

The Tribunal can't save any of us, he thinks bitterly, rubbing the ash and dirt from his shimmering moon-and-star ring. They won't even be able to save themselves. But he hopes that, whenever he finally does claw his way into their shiny temples and annihilate them, some benevolent new gods might move in to take their place in this loathsome hellscape. Or probably not. He doubts any self-respecting deity would ever look fondly upon these inhabitants of Morrowind, at least not the way the Tribunal has shaped them over the past few millennia: always looking for the next half-decent excuse to tear into their neighbor's purses, houses, and innards. This lousy Blight has certainly brought out the worst in them. He got spit on by a city guard just yesterday.

If there's beauty to be found in Morrowind, he's never seen it. Once, a caravan guide pointed out a sunrise to him, rich scarlet and saffron like the wildflowers back home in Cyrodiil, but all he could think about was the lobotomized silt strider the guide was piloting as they stood in the carved-out meat of its thorax. He's noticed that, sometimes, the silt striders will still have their fleeting little glimpses of autonomy, and they'll twitch their mandibles in salute to a fresh breeze from the mainland. But then the moment is gone again, and the caravan guide seizes an exposed bundle of nerves and lurches them forward.

His drink is already empty for the third time. The tawny glass catches bits of firelight in its scuffs and scratches as he raises it to wag at the barkeep. On his chipped plate, the sad little carapace from his hound meat is peppered with tooth-marks, every last edible scrap already torn from it. When his drink is refilled, he can tell there's a fat drowned weevil bouncing around the sujamma bottle, but he brings the glass to his lips just the same.

A handful of tarnished gold pieces spill out of his coinpurse. The faintest plume of ash is kicked up from the countertop. More than a few of the coins are marred with dried blood, or hopefully just nix-ox venom.

Framed by a smudged window, flanked on all sides by roiling ash clouds and rivers of fire, Red Mountain waits for him just past the horizon.

He swears his skin is actively turning grayer and sicklier the longer he stays here— maybe not even from the ashes at all.


End file.
